August, 2010

There is your “social self” and “essential self”. Your essential self is your true self. It alone knows what you need to thrive. It tries to send that knowledge up through your social self like seedlings struggling up through the dirt to break surface, seek sunlight. You get glimmerings. You get flashes of insight. You…

It was only a matter of time before Seth Godin quit traditional publishing. (Apparently he’s tried it before. But I bet he really means it this time.) When he talks, or writes, or posts on his blog, or gives away free stuff, people pay attention. Lots and lots and lots of people. He no longer…

I’m in the muck and murk of my novel, otherwise known as “the middle”. The middle is a difficult place. It’s hard to sustain tension. It’s easy to get lost. And I got lost – which manifests itself, for me, in writer’s block, like a big hand rising out of my subconscious to smack me…

Perhaps one of the most crippling beliefs in this culture is that talent is an inborn, fixed, unchanging quality. Either you’re born with it or you’re not. The revelations about something called deliberate practice point up a different truth. Talent starts out as a spark, a glimmer, that is protected, coached and nurtured through years…

1 When I first tweeted about my post the importance of being interesting(the first in this series), one of my followers/followees responded I’m pretty sure I’m the most boring person on the planet.* And in the comments section of my most recent post, Irving Podulsky asked the very valid question: Can one LEARN to be…

You can define interestingness as “the quality or condition of being interesting” (duh!) or, perhaps more importantly, “the ability to hold one’s attention.” We all want to be interested and interesting. In her book FASCINATE, Sally Hogshead refers to a study that demonstrates how “people would be willing to pay almost a week’s salary to…